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We ran into a problem with a set of Sun T5240 servers. We got them from another business unit in our company. They had used and configured the LSI Raid controller that’s built into the server.

Normally you can use raidctl from the OS to unconfigure or reconfigure the RAID controller. Unfortunately, any time we tried to boot from net or DVD to jumpstart the server it would panic.  Even doing a “boot cdrom -s” would panic shortly after displaying the banner.

I called Sun support and they showed how to unconfigure the RAID controller from the ok prompt. Please note that this is not generally supported and I take *NO* responsibility for any damage you might do by trying to follow these instructions.

From the OK prompt:

setenv fcode-debug? true
setenv auto-boot? false
reset-all

Wait for reboot to ok prompt. Next we select the path for the controller. First find the path. Run ‘show-disks’ and hit ‘q’ to quit out. We don’t Actually want to select one, we just want the list. In the case of our server, the path for the RAID controller was “/pci@400/pci@0/pci@8/scsi@0”. Be aware that the output of show-disks includes “/disk” at the end of that. Leave this off in the commands, we just want the point up to “scsi@0”

show-disks
q

Now select the controller:

select /pci@400/pci@0/pci@8/scsi@0
show-volumes

Under normal circumstances, this will simply display the volumes. If like me you’ve done something stupid like mix the disks around, it will display a ton of errors forever. You’ll have to send a break to get back to the OK prompt. You will then have to repeat the previous commands except for the show-volumes before proceeding.

Either way, take note of how many volumes were there [ie. Volume 0 and Volume 1].

For each volume starting at the highest number do the following: Note: For each volume number, repeat the command until it complains that the volume is not found. I had to do 1 delete-volume around 4-5 times before it was really deleted.

1 delete-volume
0 delete-volume

Once you’ve run those commands repeatedly for each volume until it complains that the volume doesn’t exist, you should now be able to boot from a DVD or do a jumpstart install normally.

Don’t forget to turn on auto-boot? and turn off fcode-debug?

setenv fcode-debug? false
setenv auto-boot? true
reset-all